New leadership rules are a "clumsy attempt" by Kevin Rudd to ensure he held power, Ms Gillard said.Source: News Limited

FORMER PM Julia Gillard has attacked Kevin Rudd for his focus on selfies and schmoozing, and warned Labor needs to change its poll-driven focus to one with purpose.

"Caucus and party members should use this contest to show that Labor has moved on from its leadership being determined on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery of selfies and content-less social media,'' Ms Gillard has written in an essay on Labor's lessons and future for the Guardian Australia website.

Breaking her silence of more than two months, Ms Gillard confessed the leadership battle had wounded her personally.

"Mr Rudd does not propose to comment on Ms Gillard's essay," a spokesman said.

"On Friday Mr Rudd told his Labor colleagues that he expected free-ranging analysis of his character from a variety of people in the wake of last Saturday's election.

"But Mr Rudd made clear he did not believe it was in the interests of the Labor Party and its future for him to respond."

The long, lonely election night

"I sat alone on election night as the results came in,'' she writes.

"I wanted it that way. I wanted to just let myself be swept up in it.''

She says the loss of power is felt physically in moments of distress - something her Labor colleagues must be also feeling.

"We have some grieving to do together,'' she says.

"But ultimately it has to be grieving for the biggest thing lost, the power to change our nation for the better.''

Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten at Parliament House in Canberra.Source: News Limited

Leadership rules 'a power game'

Ms Gillard says the new rules for electing leaders, pushed through caucus by Kevin Rudd after he toppled her, are "a clumsy attempt to hold power''.

Under the new rules, Labor can only change leaders when the former leader resigns, the party loses an election, or three-quarters of the caucus votes no confidence in the leader.

Caucus and party members get to vote for the new leader - currently a contest between Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten.

"These rules protect an unsupported, poorly performing, incumbent rather than ensuring that the best person gets chosen and supported for the best reasons,'' Ms Gillard writes in an essay for The Guardian Australia online.

"These rules literally mean that a person could hang on as Labor leader and as prime minister even if every member of cabinet ... has decided that person was no longer capable of functioning as prime minister.''

She noted the irony of opposing rules that would have allowed her to take power from Mr Rudd in 2010 but not let him take back the mantle in June as he did.

Through returning Mr Rudd to the leadership, the party had "unambiguously sent a very clear message that it cared about nothing other than the prospects of survival of its members of parliament at the polls''.

This new contest should be one where the candidates articulated why they wanted to lead Labor rather than just why they could win.

She hoped whoever won would serve as Labor leader for a long time, well into government.

"Achieving that requires much more than a ballot,'' she writes.

"It requires a true acceptance by all of the result of the ballot. Solidarity, not destabilisation.

"This is where Labor has failed.''

Congrats to Mr Abbott &amp; Mr Truss for leading their parties to victory. I wish them &amp; their teams well. It's always an honour to serve. JG

The former prime minister urges her party to learn the lessons from its 1996 loss and make sure it owns its good record in government while also examining which election promises to keep and which to reject.

She says Labor must stand up for its economic record and also policies that are right but may be unpopular, like carbon pricing.

Carbon ‘tax’ hurt me politically: Julia Gillard.Source: NewsComAu

Carbon a taxing fight

Ms Gillard concedes she was wrong to not contest coalition leader Tony Abbott's labelling of the carbon pricing scheme as a "tax''.

"I feared the media would end up playing constant silly word games with me, trying to get me to say the word `tax','' she says.

"But I made the wrong choice and, politically, it hurt me terribly.''

When your messages get mixed

Ms Gillard relates the story of an elderly lady asking her during the election whether it was the fault of the lady or the campaign that she can't understand what it's about.

"After a resounding Labor loss, that word fault is now everywhere,'' she writes.

"But though it is so painful and so hard, now is a time for cool analysis.

"It is a time to carefully plan Labor's future and its next contribution to the nation.''

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Comments on this story

lcd Posted at 11:12 PM September 14, 2013

The bitter knitter can shove off.

Kosta of brighton Posted at 11:09 PM September 14, 2013

No fan of Gillard or Rudd but the way Rudd went about destabilising his own party just so he could get revenge is bizarre and on top of that he things he did them a favour by maybe saving a few seats.

Matt of Australia Posted at 11:07 PM September 14, 2013

So you now know how Kevin felt after you did the same to him. No sympathy here, just goes to prove Karma exists

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